The Learning Circuit’s Blog Big Question of the Month is about To-Learn lists: whether they make sense, how to implement them, etc. Interesting question. On the face of it, it seems useful: identifying and focusing on explicit and specific learning goals. In practice, do they make sense? Do they even exist?
i would suggest that they do exist, and that every time a manager and employee agree on a development plan, there’s at least an implicit To-Learn list. Obviously, a competency path in an LMS is similarly a formal TL list. And we have an implicit one when we sign up for a course, whether online or face-to-face, buy a book on a topic, or access an online tutorial, FAQ, help page, etc.
I do think that being explicit about learning is valuable, hence my focus on meta-learning, and having clear goals is a way to make them happen. On the other hand, I think many of our learning goals are small and immediate (like my desire to figure out how to fix the CSS on my website and this blog). Would it make sense to capture them in the context and generalize them to be thought of at other times? Probably, and consequently another way we could use our mobile tools to make us more effective (I regularly capture ToDos in my mobile devices, which is why the iPhone is still making me crazy!). And there have been times I’ve put things to look up into my ToDo (though these days I often just look them up in the moment).
So, I think they’re a great idea, maybe not separate from ToDos in general, but worth thinking of as a sub-category, and worth taking the effort to make explicit. Little bits of learning over the long haul: slow learning!
Well, I have a question *raises her hand* :
How does that apply to learning languages? Can you do ToLearn least before actually learning? Would it be helpful to determine yourself to focus on some area of word bulding or grammar structures beforehand?
I mean, doesn’t it just make lists of ToDo homeworks (learn vocab, chapter 9, learn the conjugation table page 123 etc.) Is it considered ToLearn list?
Or maybe it should be taken more generally like “learn how to tell jokes in *insert random language here*” or “learn how to write formal and informal letters”. Is it really helpful? Can I get any advice on how to make my students compile such ToLearn lists?
Oh, that was many questions, sorry. ^^;;
Mizuu, thank you for being so polite and raising your hand :). I think your examples work, at different levels: you’d start at “how to tell jokes” perhaps, but then you’d break down into your lower levels: learn to conjugate “learn”.
You’d break down the top level one into lower levels, just as a ToDo to “remodel the kitchen” might start with “contact kitchen designer” and have a bunch of steps before it’s done. So, learning to write in/formal letters might break into how to open and close a formal letter, and then into learning to use the proper form of the verb to match the relative status level of the addressee.
Providing structure around the task might help learners from feeling overwhelmed at the beginning (ala Stephanie Burns’ work on successful learners managing expectations well) by seeing that it breaks down into some manageable steps. Managing the ToLearn list is, in essence, what formal courses do, so your question prompts me to think that ToLearn lists might be more useful for informal learning. What do you think?
Oh I see.
This is basically what I do with my tasks, but even as a teacher of language (Japanese and Polish), I cannot imagine myself ticking off some points as I go. Either way, I was thinking – ToDo lists really seems less overhelming than any other thing. Maybe a good ToLearn list in my case should be something between a tick-off list and curriculum for each let’s say, chapter, provided before the lessons about it, so students an focus more easily?
And yes, informal learning goes better with ToLearn lists, yet, each idea can be adapted somehow if it’s good.